Music Feature

Marriage in the 21st Century: A Review of Nell Freudenberger's The Newlyweds

Nell Freudenberger’s third book The Newlyweds, set to be published in May by Knopf, could be the
slap in the face that the critics who have deemed her as too attractive, too
young, and too lucky, need. After
Freudenberger’s story Lucky Girls was
published in The New Yorker when she
was just twenty-six years old, her much anticipated collection of stories with
the same name was published soon thereafter.
Winning the PEN/Malamud award for short fiction and publishing a second
book, The Dissident, cemented her
position as a talent to be watched.
While the media seemed to focus in on her beauty and “luck” (she was working
as an editorial assistant at The New
Yorker when they published her story) The
Newlyweds proves that Freudenberger does, indeed, live up to her title as
one of The New Yorkers “20 Under 40”
best writers.

Her third novel is
honest, funny and nuanced in a way that mimics the realities of life. Telling the story of Amina Mazid, a
twenty-four year old Bangladeshi who leaves her home and parents to marry
George Stillman, an unromantic thirty-four year old electrical engineer, whom
she met off the website AsianEuro.com, Freudenberger delves into the
uncomfortable but exciting predicament that is George and Amina’s first year of
marriage. From finding a job to
struggling with understanding George’s family members and neighbors, Amina’s
quest to fit in feels real; you’re even rooting for her as you read,
empathizing with the awkwardness of their honeymoon and the learning curve that
comes with trying to fit into American society.
At one point she goes shopping for a mattress with George only to find
that he expects her to lie on the bed with him in front of everyone in the
store, an act that would be considered sinful in her culture.

Freudenberger’s deft
writing seamlessly carries the story from the first few months of their
marriage to the end of the first year and thereafter. You watch Amina change, mature, and even
take the reins of her marriage, putting her foot down with George, who appears naïve,
with little understanding or appreciation for other cultures, though not
mean-spirited, just ignorant, as he is only familiar with the American Amina,
not the Bangladeshi one, whom Amina herself references in third person. “In a way, George had created her American
self, and so it made sense that it was the only one he would see,” thinks
Amina.

Freudenberger speaks to
the difficulties of moving to a foreign country beautifully. She was inspired to write the story after
meeting a young woman from Bangladesh on an airplane a few years ago. She says the woman was coming to America to
marry a man whom she’d met off the Internet.
“The little I learned about her on that flight suggested that she had
come from an ordinary, middle-class Muslim family—a family in which a decision
like hers would be almost unthinkable. I
was curious to know what in a person’s makeup might lead her to change her life
in such a radically unconventional way,” Fredenberger told The New Yorker.

The
Newlyweds is a thoughtful exploration of that curiosity: the
quest for learning and understanding a new language, the sacrifices made for
love, and secrets held by families that both shake and shape the outcome of
people’s lives. The book asks questions
about all of these topics. Eventually,
Amina must journey back home and interact as she once did in her old life, meet
her old self again, if there can be such a distinction made between the
Bangladeshi and the American Amina: “Her own promises and responsibilities were
distant and indistinct, as if they belonged to a different person. At the same time she felt as if she’d entered
herself again, the left-behind self who’d been waiting for her for so long.”

Freudenberger manages
to create characters that truly learn, change and grow throughout the book, not
forcefully and at the will of the author, but organically and in such a way
that only speaks to her brilliance as a writer.
The relationships in the book feel real.
Hard decisions are made by the characters. Mistakes are made. Life ensues, and by the end, you are wishing
for another chapter—a further glimpse into Amina’s life. What is the basis of a happy marriage? Is it love, practicality, a common culture, or
perhaps something else entirely?

For the critics who
have deemed Freudenberger as lucky or beautiful (though I’m not sure what that
has to do with anything, and I wonder if that would be an obstacle for a male
writer to overcome), The Newlyweds speaks
for itself. Freudenberger’s insight into
this couple’s lives feels like someone opening the door to let you peak into a
bit of magic. It’s a true triumph of a
book.